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<title>The Devil&#8217;s Dictionary: F</title>
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<h1>F</h1>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">fairy,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, 
that formerly inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits, 
and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The fairies 
are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a clergyman of the Church 
of England saw three near Colchester as lately as 1855, while passing through a 
park after dining with the lord of the manor. 
The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected that his account 
of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 
a troop of fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a 
peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The son of a wealthy 
<i>bourgeois</i> disappeared about the same time, 
but afterward returned. He had seen the 
abduction been in pursuit of the fairies. 
Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers that so great 
is the fairies’ power of transformation that he saw one change itself into two 
opposing armies and fight a battle with great slaughter, and that the next day, 
after it had resumed its original shape and gone away, there were seven hundred 
bodies of the slain which the villagers had to bury. He does not say if any of the 
wounded recovered. In the time of Henry III, of England, a law 
was made which prescribed the death penalty for “Kyllynge, wowndynge, or 
mamynge” a fairy, and it was universally respected.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">faith,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> Belief without evidence in what is told by 
one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.</p> 
 
<p id="famous" class="entry"><span class="def">famous,</span> <span class="pos">adj.</span> Conspicuously miserable.</p> 
 
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<p class="poetry">Done to a turn on 
the iron, behold<br /> 
Him who to be 
famous aspired.<br /> 
Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold,<br /> 
And his twistings 
are greatly admired.</p> 
 
<p class="citeauth">Hassan Brubuddy.</p>

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<p class="entry">&nbsp;</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">fashion,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.</p> 
 
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<p class="poetry">A king there was 
who lost an eye<br /> 
In some excess of 
passion;<br /> 
And straight his 
courtiers all did try<br /> 
To follow the new 
fashion.<br /> 
Each dropped one 
eyelid when before<br /> 
The throne he 
ventured, thinking<br /> 
‘Twould please the 
king. That monarch swore<br /> 
He’d slay them all 
for winking.<br /> 
What should they 
do? They were not hot<br /> 
To hazard such 
disaster;<br /> 
They dared not 
close an eye—dared not<br /> 
See better than 
their master.<br /> 
Seeing them 
lacrymose and glum,<br /> 
A leech consoled 
the weepers:<br /> 
He spread small 
rags with liquid gum<br /> 
And covered half 
their peepers.<br /> 
The court all wore 
the stuff, the flame<br /> 
Of royal anger 
dying.<br /> 
That’s how 
court-plaster got its name<br /> 
Unless I’m greatly 
lying.</p> 
 
<p class="citeauth">Naramy Oof.</p>

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<p class="entry"><span class="def">feast,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A festival. 
A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently 
in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness. In the Roman Catholic 
Church feasts are 
“movable” and “immovable,” but the celebrants are uniformly immovable until 
they are full. In their earliest 
development these entertainments took the form of feasts for the dead; such 
were held by the Greeks, under the name <i>Nemeseia</i>, 
by the Aztecs and Peruvians, as in modern times they are popular with the 
Chinese; though it is believed that the ancient dead, like the modern, were 
light eaters. Among the many feasts of 
the Romans was the <i>Novemdiale</i>, 
which was held, according to Livy, whenever stones fell from heaven.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">felon,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A person of greater enterprise than 
discretion, who in embracing an opportunity has formed an unfortunate 
attachment.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">female,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.</p> 
 
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<p class="poetry">The Maker, at Creation’s birth,<br /> 
With living things had stocked the 
earth.<br /> 
From elephants to bats and snails,<br /> 
They all were good, for all were 
males.<br /> 
But when the Devil came and saw<br /> 
He said: “By Thine eternal law<br /> 
Of growth, maturity, decay,<br /> 
These all must quickly pass away<br /> 
And leave untenanted the earth<br /> 
Unless Thou dost establish birth”—<br /> 
Then tucked his head beneath his 
wing<br /> 
To laugh—he had no sleeve—the thing<br /> 
With deviltry did so accord,<br /> 
That he’d suggested to the Lord.<br /> 
The Master pondered this advice,<br /> 
Then shook and threw the fateful 
dice<br /> 
Wherewith all matters here below<br /> 
Are ordered, and observed the 
throw;<br /> 
Then bent His head in awful state,<br /> 
Confirming the decree of Fate.<br /> 
From every part of earth anew<br /> 
The conscious dust consenting flew,<br /> 
While rivers from their courses rolled<br /> 
To make it plastic for the mould.<br />
Enough collected (but no more,<br /> 
For niggard Nature hoards her store)<br /> 
He kneaded it to flexible clay,<br /> 
While Nick unseen threw some away.<br /> 
And then the various forms He cast,<br /> 
Gross organs first and finer last;<br />
No one at once evolved, but all<br /> 
By even touches grew and small<br /> 
Degrees advanced, till, shade by shade,<br /> 
To match all living things He’d made<br /> 
Females, complete in all their parts<br /> 
Except (His clay gave out) thec hearts.<br /> 
“No matter,” Satan cried; “with speed<br /> 
I’ll fetch the very hearts they need”—<br /> 
So flew away and soon brought back<br /> 
The number needed, in a sack.<br /> 
That night earth range with sounds of strife—<br /> 
Ten million males each had a wife;<br /> 
That night sweet Peace her pinions spread<br /> 
O’er Hell—ten million devils dead!</p> 
 
<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p> 
 
 
 
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<p class="entry"><span class="def">fib,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar’s 
nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.</p> 
 
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<p class="poetry">When David said: “All men are liars,” Dave,<br /> 
Himself a liar, fibbed like any thief.<br /> 
Perhaps he thought to weaken disbelief<br /> 
By proof that even himself was not a slave<br /> 
To Truth; though I suspect the aged knave<br /> 
Had been of all her servitors the chief<br /> 
Had he but known a fig’s reluctant leaf<br /> 
Is more than e’er she wore on land or wave.<br /> 
No, David served not Naked Truth when he<br /> 
Struck that sledge-hammer blow at all his race;<br /> 
Nor did he hit the nail upon the head:<br /> 
For reason shows that it could never be,<br /> 
And the facts contradict him to his face.<br /> 
Men are not liars all, for some are dead.</p> 
 
<p class="citeauth">Bartle Quinker.</p>

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<p class="entry"><span class="def">fickleness,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The iterated satiety of an 
enterprising affection.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fiddle,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> An instrument to tickle human ears by 
friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.</p> 
 
<p class="quote">To Rome said 
Nero: “If to smoke you turn I shall not 
cease to fiddle while you burn.” To Nero Rome replied: “Pray do your worst, 
‘Tis my excuse that you were fiddling first.”&#8212;<i>Orm Pludge</i></p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fidelity,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A virtue peculiar to those who are about to 
be betrayed.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">finance,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The art or science of managing revenues and resources 
for the best advantage of the manager. 
The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the 
first syllable is one of America’s most precious discoveries and possessions.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">flag,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted 
on forts and ships. It appears to serve 
the same purpose as certain signs that one sees and vacant lots in 
London—“Rubbish may be shot here.”</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">flesh,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The Second Person of the secular Trinity.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">flop,</span> <span class="pos"> v.</span> Suddenly to change one’s opinions and go 
over to another party. The most notable 
flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as 
a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fly-speck,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The prototype of punctuation. It is observed by 
Garvinus that the systems 
of punctuation in use by the various literary nations depended originally upon 
the social habits and general diet of the flies infesting the several 
countries. These creatures, which have 
always been distinguished for a neighborly and companionable familiarity with 
authors, liberally or niggardly embellish the manuscripts in process of growth 
under the pen, according to their bodily habit, bringing out the sense of the 
work by a species of interpretation superior to, and independent of, the 
writer’s powers. The “old masters” of 
literature—that is to say, the early writers whose work is so esteemed by later 
scribes and critics in the same language—never punctuated at all, but worked 
right along free-handed, without that abruption of the thought which comes from 
the use of points. (We observe the same 
thing in children to-day, whose usage in this particular is a striking and 
beautiful instance of the law that the infancy of individuals reproduces the 
methods and stages of development characterizing the infancy of races.) 
In the work of these primitive scribes all 
the punctuation is found, by the modern investigator with his optical 
instruments and chemical tests, to have been inserted by the writers’ ingenious 
and serviceable collaborator, the common house-fly&#8212;<i>Musca maledicta</i>. 
In transcribing these ancient MSS, for the purpose of either 
making the work their own or preserving what they naturally regard as divine 
revelations, later writers reverently and accurately copy whatever marks they 
find upon the papyrus or parchment, to the unspeakable enhancement of the 
lucidity of the thought and value of the work. 
Writers contemporary with the copyists naturally avail themselves of the 
obvious advantages of these marks in their own work, and with such assistance 
as the flies of their own household may be willing to grant, frequently rival 
and sometimes surpass the older compositions, in respect at least of 
punctuation, which is no small glory. 
Fully to understand the important services that flies perform to 
literature it is only necessary to lay a page of some popular novelist 
alongside a saucer of cream-and-molasses in a sunny room and observe “how the 
wit brightens and the style refines” in accurate proportion to the duration of 
exposure.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">folly,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> That “gift and faculty divine” whose 
creative and controlling energy inspires Man’s mind, guides his actions and 
adorns his life.</p> 
 
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<p class="poetry">Folly! although Erasmus praised thee once<br /> 
In a thick volume, and all authors known,<br /> 
If not thy glory yet thy power have shown,<br /> 
Deign to take homage from thy son who hunts<br /> 
Through all thy maze his brothers, fool and dunce,<br /> 
To mend their lives and to sustain his own,<br /> 
However feebly be his arrows thrown,<br /> 
Howe’er each hide the flying weapons blunts.<br /> 
All-Father Folly! be it mine to raise,<br /> 
With lusty lung, here on his western strand<br /> 
With all thine offspring thronged from every land,<br /> 
Thyself inspiring me, the song of praise.<br /> 
And if too weak, I’ll hire, to help me bawl,<br /> 
Dick Watson Gilder, gravest of us all.</p> 
 
<p class="citeauth">Aramis Loto Frope.</p>

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<p id="fool" class="entry"><span class="def">fool,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A person who pervades the domain of 
intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral 
activity. He is omnific, omniform, 
omnipercipient, omniscience, omnipotent. 
He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, 
the telegraph, the platitude and the circle of the sciences. He created 
patriotism and taught the nations 
war—founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine and Chicago. He established 
monarchical and republican 
government. He is from everlasting to 
everlasting—such as creation’s dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning 
of time he sang upon 
primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the procession of 
being. His grandmotherly hand was 
warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares 
Man’s evening meal of milk-and-morality and turns down the covers of the 
universal grave. And after the rest of 
us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion he will sit up to write 
a history of human civilization.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">force,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span></p>

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<p class="poetry">“Force is but might,” the teacher said—<br /> 
“That definition’s just.”<br /> 
The boy said naught but through instead,<br /> 
Remembering his pounded head:<br /> 
“Force is not might but must!”</p> 
 
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<p class="entry"><span class="def">forefinger,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The finger commonly used in pointing out two malefactors.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">foreordination,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> This looks like an easy word to 
define, but when I consider that pious and learned theologians have spent long 
lives in explaining it, and written libraries to explain their explanations; 
when I remember the nations have been divided and bloody battles caused by the 
difference between foreordination and predestination, and that millions of 
treasure have been expended in the effort to prove and disprove its 
compatibility with freedom of the will and the efficacy of prayer, praise, and 
a religious life,&#82128;recalling these awful facts in the history of the word, I 
stand appalled before the mighty problem of its signification, abase my 
spiritual eyes, fearing to contemplate its portentous magnitude, reverently 
uncover and humbly refer it to His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons and His Grace 
Bishop Potter.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">forgetfulness,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A gift of God bestowed upon doctors 
in compensation for their destitution of conscience.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">fork,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> An instrument used chiefly for the purpose 
of putting dead animals into the mouth. 
Formerly the knife was employed for this purpose, and by many worthy 
persons is still thought to have many advantages over the other tool, which, 
however, they do not altogether reject, but use to assist in charging the 
knife. The immunity of these persons 
from swift and awful death is one of the most striking proofs of God’s mercy to 
those that hate Him.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">forma pauperis.</span> <span class="pos"> [Latin]</span> In the character of a poor person—a method 
by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to 
lose his case.</p> 
 
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<p class="poetry">When Adam long ago in Cupid’s awful court<br /> 
(For Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented)<br /> 
Sued for Eve’s favor, says an ancient law report,<br /> 
He stood and pleaded unhabilimented.<br />
“You sue <i>in forma pauperis</i>, I see,” Eve cried;<br /> 
“Actions can’t here be that way prosecuted.”<br /> 
So all poor Adam’s motions coldly were denied:<br /> 
He went away—as he had come—nonsuited.</p>

<p class="citeauth">G. J.</p>

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<p class="entry"><span class="def">Frankalmoigne,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> The tenure by which a religious 
corporation holds lands on condition of praying for the soul of the donor. 
In mediaeval times many of the wealthiest 
fraternities obtained their estates in this simple and cheap manner, and once 
when Henry VIII of England sent an officer to confiscate certain vast 
possessions which a fraternity of monks held by frankalmoigne, “What!” said the 
Prior, “would you master stay our benefactor’s soul in Purgatory?” “Ay,” 
said the officer, coldly, “an ye will 
not pray him thence for naught he must e’en roast.” “But look you, my son,” 
persisted the good man, “this act hath 
rank as robbery of God!” “Nay, nay, 
good father, my master the king doth but deliver him from the manifold 
temptations of too great wealth.”</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">freebooter,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A conqueror in a small way of 
business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">freedom,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> Exemption from the stress of authority in a 
beggarly half dozen of restraint’s infinite multitude of methods. A political 
condition that every nation 
supposes itself to enjoy in virtual monopoly. 
Liberty. The distinction between 
freedom and liberty is not accurately known; naturalists have never been able 
to find a living specimen of either.</p> 
 
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<p class="poetry">Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,<br /> 
Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;<br /> 
On every wind, indeed, that blows<br /> 
I hear her yell.<br /> 
She screams whenever monarchs meet,<br /> 
And parliaments as well,<br /> 
To bind the chains about her feet<br /> 
And toll her knell.<br /> 
And when the sovereign people cast<br /> 
The votes they cannot spell,<br /> 
Upon the pestilential blast<br /> 
Her clamors swell.<br /> 
For all to whom the power’s given<br /> 
To sway or to compel,<br /> 
Among themselves apportion Heaven<br /> 
And give her Hell.</p> 
 
<p class="citeauth">Blary O’Gary.</p>

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<p class="entry"><span class="def">Freemasons,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> An order with secret rites, 
grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of 
Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by 
the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all 
the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up 
distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and 
Formless Void. The order was founded at 
different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, 
Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its 
emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the 
stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak 
and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids—always by a Freemason.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">friendless,</span> <span class="pos"> adj.</span> Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. 
Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense. </p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">friendship,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.</p> 
 
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<p class="poetry">The sea was calm and the sky was blue;<br /> 
Merrily, merrily sailed we two.<br /> 
(High barometer maketh glad.)<br /> 
On the tipsy ship, with a dreadful shout,<br /> 
The tempest descended and we fell out.<br /> 
(O the walking is nasty bad!)</p> 
 
<p class="citeauth">Armit Huff Bettle.</p>

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<p class="entry"><span class="def">frog,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A reptile with edible legs. The first mention of frogs in profane 
literature is in Homer’s narrative of the war between them and the mice. 
Skeptical persons have doubted Homer’s 
authorship of the work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann 
has set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain 
frogs. One of the forms of moral 
suasion by which Pharaoh was besought to favor the Israelities was a plague of 
frogs, but Pharaoh, who liked them <i>fricasees</i>, 
remarked, with truly oriental stoicism, that he could stand it as long as the 
frogs and the Jews could; so the programme was changed. The frog is a 
diligent songster, having a 
good voice but no ear. The libretto of 
his favorite opera, as written by Aristophanes, is brief, simple and 
effective—“brekekex-koax”; the music is apparently by that eminent composer, 
Richard Wagner. Horses have a frog in 
each hoof—a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling them to shine in a hurdle 
race.</p> 
 
<p class="entry"><span class="def">frying-pan,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> One part of the penal apparatus 
employed in that punitive institution, a woman’s kitchen. The frying-pan was 
invented by Calvin, and 
by him used in cooking span-long infants that had died without baptism; and 
observing one day the horrible torment of a tramp who had incautiously pulled a 
fried babe from the waste-dump and devoured it, it occurred to the great divine 
to rob death of its terrors by introducing the frying-pan into every household 
in Geneva. Thence it spread to all 
corners of the world, and has been of invaluable assistance in the propagation 
of his sombre faith. The following 
lines (said to be from the pen of his Grace Bishop Potter) seem to imply that 
the usefulness of this utensil is not limited to this world; but as the 
consequences of its employment in this life reach over into the life to come, 
so also itself may be found on the other side, rewarding its devotees:</p> 
 
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<p class="poetry">Old Nick was summoned to the skies.<br /> 
Said Peter: “Your intentions<br /> 
Are good, but you lack enterprise<br /> 
Concerning new inventions.<br /> 
“Now, broiling in an ancient plan<br /> 
Of torment, but I hear it<br /> 
Reported that the frying-pan<br /> 
Sears best the wicked spirit.<br /> 
“Go get one—fill it up with fat—<br /> 
Fry sinners brown and good in’t.”<br />
“I know a trick worth two o’ that,”<br /> 
Said Nick—“I’ll cook their food in’t.”</p>

<p class="citeauth">&nbsp;</p>

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<p id="funeral" class="entry"><span class="def">funeral,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> A pageant whereby we attest our respect for 
the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an 
expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.</p> 
 
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<p class="poetry">The savage dies—they sacrifice a horse<br /> 
To bear to happy hunting-grounds the corse.<br />
Our friends expire—we make the money fly<br /> 
In 
hope their souls will chase it to the sky.</p> 
 
<p class="citeauth">Jex Wopley.</p>

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<p class="entry"><span class="def">future,</span> <span class="pos"> n.</span> That period of time in which our affairs 
prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.</p>

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